Since a dam burst at its Kingston coal-fired power plant last December and dumped more than a billion gallons of toxic coal ash sludge into a nearby community and river, the federal Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) has decided to change the way it stores its coal waste, transitioning from wet landfills like the one that failed to dry storage of ash.

Now a company is pushing a plan to use dry coal ash from the Kingston plant to fill an abandoned coal mine in Tennessee -- but environmentalists are raising concerns about the proposal's health risks.

Smith Mountain Solutions, a company owned by the principals behind Wright Brothers Construction of Charleston, Tenn., has proposed taking dry ash from TVA's Kingston plant and using it to fill a former surface mine 20 miles away atop Smith Mountain in Cumberland County.

The company says it would install a protective synthetic liner first and abide by regulations of the Tennessee Department of Environmental Conservation. Coal ash is not currently regulated as hazardous waste by the federal government, though the Environmental Protection Agency has said it intends to release proposed regulations by year's end.

Smith Mountain Solutions makes the case [PDF] that the plan would benefit the environment by cleaning up the toxic acid mine drainage that now runs from the mine site. Brock Hill, the mayor of Cumberland County, also supports the plan as a way to fix an environmental eyesore, The Tennessean reports:

But many residents stand in opposition, concerned about truck traffic and the potential for air and water pollution from mercury, arsenic, and other potentially toxic substances found in ash. They draw support from a list of heavy hitters that includes the Sierra Club and the National Park Service, both of which are partly motivated by wanting to protect the nearby Obed Wild and Scenic River.

Other groups opposing the plan include Statewide Organizing for Community eMpowerment (an environmental advocacy group formerly called Save Our Cumberland Mountains), the Environmental Integrity Project, Earthjustice, the National Parks Conservation Association, and the Southern Environmental Law Center.

Their concerns include environmental damage and public health threats from contamination resulting from liner failure as well as from airborne coal ash -- a particular concern atop a windy mountain.

Coal ash contains a number of health-damaging contaminants including arsenic, lead, mercury, and radioactive elements. Children are especially vulnerable to the poisons in coal ash

A number of residents of the mountain road leading up to the mine site are also suing over the dumping plans. They include the owner of Black Cat Lodge, a drug treatment center that helps patients recover by getting close to nature. The residents say the mine filling plan has been drawn up without adequate public scrutiny.

Problems associated with dumping coal ash waste into abandoned mines have been documented nationwide. Earlier this year, the nonprofit environmental law firm Earthjustice released a report titled "Waste Deep: Filling Mines With Coal Ash Is Profit for Industry, but Poison for People" that reported on the poisoning of streams and drinking water supplies by the practice.

Earthjustice estimates that about 25 million tons of coal ash waste -- about 20 percent of all such waste generated -- is dumped into old mines each year. The practice, which is occurring throughout the U.S. coalfields, is embraced by utilities because it dramatically cuts down on coal ash disposal costs.

But a four-year study of coal ash mine fills in Pennsylvania by the Clean Air Task Force found that the practice worsened water quality at 10 of the 15 sites examined, while the other five sites lacked adequate monitoring data to know whether the coal waste was responsible for adverse effects.

The plan being considered for Smith Mountain is different from many mine filling projects in that it includes a synthetic liner as well as a leachate collection system for runoff. However, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has acknowledged that most landfills eventually leak.

The leachate collection systems used in landfills are not foolproof either, according to the Environmental Research Foundation. The systems have a tendency to clog up or corrode after a few decades, and the resulting fluid build-up increases the likelihood of liner failure, allowing the coal ash contaminants to come in direct contact with groundwater.

Cumberland County is expected to receive about $1 million a year in dumping fees from the project. But the plan has already cost one of the local leaders politically, as Mayor Hill was replaced as chairman of the county commission last month for the first time in 15 years by a 10 to 7 vote of his fellow commissioners due to his pro-ash dumping stance.

Smith Mountain Solutions initially proposed taking the ash that was spilled in the Kingston plant disaster last December, but TVA chose to dispose of that at the already-permitted Arrowhead Landfill in Perry County, Ala. That decision raised concerns about environmental justice, since Perry County is 69 percent black with 32 percent of its residents living in poverty.

Cumberland County, Tenn. is 98 percent white, with 17 percent of its residents living in poverty -- a slightly higher poverty rate than the state's 15.8 percent, according to U.S. Census Bureau data.

(A slightly longer version of this story with images and a table originally appeared at Facing South.)

Related Links:

What Do Coal and Dirty Dorm Rooms Have in Common?

Copenhagen, U.S.A. December 7

Toward a medically defensible energy policy

Alexander unveiled his nuclear plan in July.One of the few Congressional Republicans who talks about the need to address climate change, Sen. Lamar Alexander of Tennessee, made an interesting argument against wind and solar energy this week. He’s concerned about the amount of land required to produce energy from wind and solar, writing in the Wall Street Journal, “I fear we are going to destroy the environment in the name of saving the environment.”

He draws on a recent study by Nature Conservancy scientists who detail how much land is required to produce energy from different sources, an issue they dub “energy sprawl.” Alexander focuses on a small part of their findings—that wind and solar plants require a good deal more physical space than nuclear plants:

It’s a disingenuous argument, because the problem with nuclear power has never been land use. (See Radioactive Waste Disposal, Cost, and Security for more on the very difficult nuclear question.) I’m not arguing here that Alexander’s dead wrong in his long-standing love for nuclear energy, just that this is a thin argument for nuclear.

Oh, and Alexander says he won't support a cap-and-trade climate bill unless it includes his personal wish for 100 new nuke plants.

Bonus second point: If you’re an environmentalist who cares about endangered species and wild places, you shouldn’t be concerned about wind farms or solar plants. You should worry about biofuels.

At least, I’m having a hard time avoiding that conclusion after looking at a key graphic from the energy sprawl report:

Courtesy PLoS ONE

The chart measures the land required per unit (terawatt-hour) of electricity from different sources. Note that the top five sources are all for biofuels, derived from different crops. Note how much less land wind, solar voltaic and solar thermal energy require in comparison.

I won’t rehash the economic and ecological problems with biofuels here, but this should cool off the notion that wind and solar won’t fly for land-use reasons. Of course some places are more sensitive than others, but if there’s room for mountaintop removal coal mining, we have room for wind and solar plants.

There’s a certain man-bites-dog appeal in stories about environmentalists who oppose clean energy projects because they disrupt wild places and endangered species. Take the conflict over solar panels and transmission lines in the Mojave Desert. Or the quarrel over the Cape Wind project at Nantucket Sound. Or the fight over wind turbines in the Flint Hills of Kansas.

These conflicts are intriguing, sure. But the sprawl study, which appeared in PLoS ONE, the online journal of the Public Library of Science, suggests that biofuels such as ethanol pose a far greater threat to open lands.

Related Links:

Two senators push to ramp up nuclear energy

The Wind Kids: How high school students helped bring a wind farm to Milford, Utah

Nuclear companies face reactor design problems, ethics questions

Cross-posted from Wonk Room.

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce — the 97-year-old organization that bills itself as the “voice of business” — wants to put climate science on trial. As the Environmental Protection Agency nears a final ruling that manmade global warming endangers the public health and welfare, “the chamber will tell the EPA in a filing today that a trial-style public hearing” on the science of climate change is needed to “make a fully informed, transparent decision with scientific integrity based on the actual record of the science.” William Kovacs, the chamber’s senior vice president for environment, technology and regulatory affairs, told the Los Angeles Times this hearing would be “the Scopes monkey trial of the 21st century“:

It would be evolution versus creationism. It would be the science of climate change on trial.

In 1925, Tennessee schoolteacher John Scopes was indicted for teaching evolution against state law. His trial, intended as a test of the law, became a national phenomenon when as the World Christian Fundamentals Association and the American Civil Liberties Union brought the famed lawyers William Jennings Bryan and Clarence Darrow into battle. Scopes was found guilty. Even though the state supreme court overturned the verdict of the “bizarre case” on a technicality, the public fallout was intense. The anti-evolution movement lost steam (before being reborn as “intelligent design“) and science textbooks with biblical quotations were phased out.

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce is taking a similarly bizarre approach here, calling for a show trial of climate science. Perhaps Kovacs and other officials at the U.S. Chamber believe that the rest of the business world shares their extremist views. After all, U.S. corporations continue to fund their multi-million-dollar lobbying against health care and energy reform.

It’s also possible this is an attempt to disrupt the effort to fight global warming with a culture war, tying the science of climate change to fundamentalists’ unease with evolution. Conservative activists have already made the connection. “It’s still a theory,” a town hall protester confronted Rep. Mike Castle (D-DE) after he supported climate legislation in June. “So is Darwin’s theory of evolution! And yet we have the audacity to say global warming is accurate, it’s more than a theory?”

There aren’t many natural parallels between the physics of greenhouse gases emitted by burning fossil fuels and the biology of natural selection, but the American conservative movement depends on the cozy relationship between oil and the Christian right. It seems like a high-risk strategy to convince Americans that God means for us to pollute His creation on behalf of oil and coal tycoons. But when reality is not on your side, there’s not much else left.

Update: At the Swamp, Jim Tankersley explains how the "trial" would work:

Update: At Climate Progress, Joe Romm notes that the science of climate change has already been fought over in court, and asks the board members of the Chamber of Commerce "to declare whether they are evolved members of humanity or dedicated to our self-destruction."

These members claim to “support economy-wide reductions in CO2 emissions and/or federal cap-and-trade legislation”: Alcoa, Caterpillar, Deere & Co., Dow Chemical, Duke Energy, Eastman Kodak, Entergy, Fox Entertainment, IBM, Lockheed, Nike, PepsiCo., PNM Resources, Rolls Royce, Siemens, Toyota, and Xerox.

Related Links:

Obama headed to Copenhagen, sets the bar for success

Obama going to Copenhagen

For McCain, it’s really all about the fake snow

Exposure to dust and river sediment in the area of the massive coal ash spill from the Tennessee Valley Authority's Kingston power plant could present a health risk to local communities.

That's the finding of a study published this month in the journal Environmental Science & Technology. It's the first peer-reviewed, double-blind research paper to examine potential human health effects from the spill, according to Duke University's news office.

The authors include graduate students and researchers from Duke's Nicholas School of the Environment and Pratt School of Engineering, the Duke Comprehensive Cancer Center and the Georgia Institute of Technology.

"Our findings emphasize the fact that although you may stop the emission of toxic elements from coal-fired power plants into the air, they remain in the fly ash that gets stored in power plants' containment ponds, and may still end up in the environment," said study author Avner Vengosh, associate professor of earth and ocean sciences at the Nicholas School.

On Dec. 22, 2008 a containment pond at TVA's plant in eastern Tennessee failed, spilling more than a billion gallons of coal ash. In the weeks following the disaster, a team of Duke scientists analyzed sediment and water samples collected from the areas of the spill, including locations downstream and upstream on the nearby Emory and Clinch rivers. They found high levels of toxic metals and radioactivity, including 75 parts per million of arsenic, 150 parts per billion of mercury, and eight picocuries per gram of total radium.

As long as the sludge remains wet, risk of exposure via inhalation remains slight -- but that risk increases as it dries out. People already suffering from lung disease or infections would be especially susceptible to health problems from airborne coal ash dust.

During the ongoing the cleanup, TVA has worked to prevent the spilled ash from becoming airborne by vacuuming it up, wetting the ash and growing grass on top of it.

The Duke research team has also begun a program to monitor mercury levels in the nearby rivers with a $105,000 grant from the National Science Foundation. That program is examining the impact of high mercury levels on aquatic life.

Vengosh notes that there are hundreds of similar coal-ash storage ponds throughout the United States, most of them located next to rivers. Unregulated by the federal government, the ponds are subjected to an uneven patchwork of state rules.

The findings about the health risks of the spilled coal ash come as TVA is considering shutting down at least two of its oldest coal-fired plants. TVA's fleet of 11 coal plants is among the nation's oldest, with an average age of over 47 years.

At its board meeting last week, TVA President Tom Kilgore said the federal utility is studying whether to close its John Sevier Fossil Plant near Rogersville, Tenn. and the oldest of six units at the Widows Creek Fossil Plant near Stevenson, Ala., the Chattanooga Times Free Press reports:

In next year's budget, TVA plans to begin building an $820 million, combined-cycle, gas-powered plant to replace the generation at the John Sevier plant. With power demand down because of the recession, TVA also has reduced power production this year from the oldest six units at Widows Creek.

United Mountain Defense, a Tennessee-based nonprofit working to halt destructive coal mining practices, reports that TVA has been buying property around the Widows Creek plant to create a safety buffer around the plant's coal waste dumps.

Earlier this year, a leak of as much as 10,000 gallons of coal waste from a storage pond at the Widows Creek plant contaminated a tributary of the Tennessee River.

(This story originally appeared at Facing South.)

Related Links:

What Do Coal and Dirty Dorm Rooms Have in Common?

Is there a tradeoff between economics and the environment?

Copenhagen, U.S.A. December 7

In February 2009, Canada's Public Safety Minister and the country's Correctional Service announced a planned closure of all six of the prison farms owned by the people of Canada and operated by CORCAN - the branch of the Correctional Service that operates the farm rehabilitation programs which also provide employment training to inmates. The excellent syndicated Canadian radio show Deconstructing Dinner, which covers the local food movement, detailed all of this in its July 2nd show, and it's a fascinating listen.

The proposed closure is a move that's spawned a national grassroots movement to block the action, Save Our Farms.

Why close the farms, Mr. Minister? Because, he explains, they've lost $4 million (doesn't that sound like the cost of a training program, though?) and, worse, prison farms are training people in skills that are 50 years behind the times - growing food by hand, milking cows, and such. This guy apparently has no idea what's on the horizon for food production, and prefers the model with the hydroponic aquabots tending to seas of floating produce or something.

Never mind that Canada's prison farm infrastructures are often relied on by small private farms nearby, that they supply cheap fresh food to large institutions, and the fact that the inmates interviewed in the story told of enjoying the farm work and testified to its great therapeutic effects and a desire to continue this work after release. Add to the picture Canada's farm succession problems and its burgeoning local agriculture revival and one would seem to be mad to close these farms. The one in Kingston, Ontario, is likely the largest urban farm in Canada, a last reservoir of open land in a sprawling city.

Where the prisons plan to get their fresh food from post-CORCAN is my question, and rumors abound that the farms will either be privatized or worse, sold for development at a profit. But what a loss that would be: Canada’s prison farms sit on some of the most desirable agricultural land in their regions and many are close to urban areas.  And there's an ironic twist: Canada's prison farms are an international model and have been recently toured by delegations from Japan, Russia, and New Zealand, the latter hoping to take its own prison farms organic.

In the US, prison farms are also a source of tilth and production. A quick search turns up items like these two:

Nashville prison saves $150K composting all food waste; grows 100 acres of veggies.

And then there's New Jersey, whose largest farmer is its prison system, managed by AgriIndustries - 'a self-supporting operation without appropriated funds. Annual revenues total approximately $11.5 million, with substantial savings to all users. The departments of Corrections, Human Services, and Military and Veterans Affairs, as well as the Juvenile Justice Commission, utilize products from AgriIndustries.'

Their site also says that their operations 'utilize and train about 100 inmates daily in all areas of food production technology,' and that, (surprisingly, to me), 'the food production industry is the largest employer in New Jersey,' and that 'inmates receive training and experience that may qualify them to gain employment when they leave the prison system.'

If that last bit is true, it's another in a long list of reasons why these rehabilitative programs ought to be championed and remain integral to prisons. It's just plain healing to grow and care for things, and we are going to need a lot more people, with criminal records or not, that know how to do that in the near future.

Related Links:

The tar sands blow

The new wave of urban farming (and fresh food from small spaces!)

The must-read solutions book by Al Gore

Bob Corker

Sen. Bob Corker came out swinging against the climate bill that the House passed in June.

"I didn’t think it was possible, but the Waxman-Markey climate bill appears to be even more problematic than the climate bill that tanked in the Senate last spring," he said, referring to the Lieberman-Warner bill that he voted against in 2008. "I don’t know of many special interests that don’t receive a pay-off in this [Waxman-Markey] legislation, and if it comes to the Senate floor in this form, I’ll vote against it."

Yet Corker understands that climate change is a problem and has called for legislation to address it. In 2007, he traveled to Greenland with a bipartisan group of senators to observe the impacts of climate change, noting upon his return that the U.S. has "a unique opportunity to marry concerns ... like carbon dioxide emissions and energy security." He said he was "leaning in the direction" of supporting a carbon-trading program.

Lately Corker has been insisting that he won't accept anything short of a climate plan that auctions 100 percent of pollution permits and returns the money directly to Americans, and his preferred approach would be a carbon tax.

"I want to tell you that I wish we would just talk about a carbon tax, 100 percent of which would be returned to the American people. So there's no net dollars that would come out of the American people's pockets," Corker told Al Gore during a hearing of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee earlier this year.

Track the debate and take action >>>

When the Obama administration rolled out its first budget this year with a framework for a cap-and-trade plan that would have returned roughly 80 percent of the revenues from pollution permits to citizens, Corker bashed it. He called the proposal "slight of hand" and said it is a "massive climate tax increase all Americans will pay."

His office put out a press release shortly thereafter, noting, "Corker has worked to ensure that whatever Congress implements, be it a cap-and-trade system that acts as a tax or a transparent carbon tax, that 100 percent of the tax revenue is returned to the American people and is not used to increase the size of government."

So it looks like Corker won't accept anything short of a complete cap-and-dividend approach, which doesn't seem to have much traction with most other members of Congress. Don't count on him for a "yes" vote on whatever climate bill emerges from the Senate.

Do you know more about this senator's stance on climate legislation? Tell us.

Find out about other senators by clicking on their names in the right column.

Related Links:

Obama headed to Copenhagen, sets the bar for success

What to make of the new climate poll

Obama administration officials grateful for early spring

Lamar Alexander

Sen. Lamar Alexander realizes that we need to do something about climate change and has tried to distance himself from the skeptics in his party. "I am one senator who thinks climate change is a problem, humans are causing it, and we need to deal with it," he said at a recent hearing of the Environment and Public Works Committee.

But he hates the climate bill the Democratic leadership pushed through the House, and he's spoken out against the cap-and-trade approach in general. He called the House bill “a job-killing, $100-billion-a-year national energy tax” that “will raise utility bills and send jobs overseas looking for cheap energy,” and said the plan is "unfixable" and "needs to be junked."

"We have a spectrum of opinions in the U.S. Senate," said Alexander. "We have some people who believe [climate change is] a hoax, and some people who are willing to jump off a cliff. I don't think we ought to jump off a cliff, but we ought to buy some insurance."

The insurance Alexander wants to buy seems to consist primarily of a massive expansion of nuclear power. In introducing an energy and climate plan in mid-July, he called for building 100 new nuclear power plants over the next 20 years. He also called for a low-carbon fuel standard, which he argues would not raise the price of gasoline, and for more electric vehicles, expanded offshore oil and gas drilling, and increased funding for renewable energy R&D. His plan, he said, is "the cheap energy solution," whereas "a high-cost solution like Waxman-Markey would be the expensive solution."

But Alexander has argued in favor of taxing carbon directly, at least from coal. "We should have carbon tax on coal, leave everything else alone," he said at a recent summit organized by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce's Institute for 21st Century Energy. He also argued that the Nobel Prize should go to the person who makes carbon-capture-and-storage technology scalable.

Track the debate and take action >>>

Alexander has been increasingly critical of coal, an unexpected development as he comes from a state that is fairly coal-reliant. "Coal is a dirty business," he said at a January hearing of the Environment and Public Works Committee, shortly after a coal-ash spill devastated a Tennessee town. In June, he introduced legislation to end the practice of dumping mine waste into streams, and made strong statements about mountaintop-removal coal mining. "Coal is an essential part of our energy future, but it is not necessary to destroy our mountain tops and streams in order to have enough coal," he said.

Whether the Senate will be able to craft a comprehensive climate and energy plan to Alexander's liking remains to be seen, but he is more willing to participate in the process than many others in his party.

Do you know more about this senator's stance on climate legislation? Tell us.

Find out about other senators by clicking on their names in the right column.

Related Links:

Obama headed to Copenhagen, sets the bar for success

What to make of the new climate poll

Obama administration officials grateful for early spring

There will be no more excursions to Dollywood for Roger Horton, a coal miner who lives in West Virginia -- at least not until U.S. Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) drops legislation he's sponsoring that would limit mountaintop removal mining.

Horton is the mastermind behind a tourism boycott involving miners in neighboring West Virginia and Kentucky, who say they refuse to spend any money in Tennessee as long as its Senator is threatening their jobs.

The Washington Post reports that Horton came up with the idea for the boycott while riding the bus home from a June 25 Senate committee hearing on the Appalachian Restoration Act, sponsored by Alexander and Sen. Benjamin Cardin (D-Md.). The law would prevent the dumping of toxic mining waste from mountaintop removal mining into headwater streams.

"It's not necessary to destroy our mountaintops in order to have enough coal," Alexander said in his opening statement at that hearing. "Saving our mountaintops is important to me."

That didn't sit well with the miners, who fear their jobs are on the line. Horton is a truck driver who works at Guyan Mine, a mountaintop removal operation in Logan County, W.V. owned by Apogee Coal Co., a subsidiary of Missouri-based Patriot Coal. A member of the UMWA Local 5958, Horton also directs a lobby group called Citizens for Coal, which counts among its funders the Logan County Commission.

"I understand their feelings," Alexander told the Associated Press. "But I have feelings, too. And my feelings are that millions of people come to Tennessee to see the beauty of the mountaintops and not to see mountains whose tops have been blown off with the waste dumped in our streams -- which is all I am trying to stop."

Members of Coal River Mountain Watch, a grassroots citizens' group working to stop mountaintop removal, say they intend to visit Tennessee to counter the miners' boycott.

The boycott comes amid heightening tensions in Appalachia's mining communities. The West Virginia Council of Churches recently released a statement calling for peaceful dialogue in the coal fields and urging civic leaders, the coal industry and environmental groups to "desist in using inflammatory rhetoric, and to encourage an attitude of understanding toward those with whom one disagrees."

Earlier this month, the premiere of a documentary film about mountaintop removal was canceled at a one West Virginia venue because of unspecified security concerns. In other recent incidents involving violence or the threat of it, a proponent of mountaintop removal was charged with assaulting an nonviolent protester, while supporters of a mountaintop removal mining company crashed a music festival and threatened mountaintop removal opponents.

(This story originally appeared at Facing South.)

Related Links:

What Do Coal and Dirty Dorm Rooms Have in Common?

Learning how to count to 350

Copenhagen, U.S.A. December 7

The crazy quilt of regulations governing coal ash disposal across the United States got a new patch this week when North Carolina lawmakers passed a law requiring stricter regulation of coal ash impoundments, the giant lagoons where utility companies store the nearly 6 million pounds of toxic combustion waste generated each year at electric power plants.

The state House passed the bill on Wednesday. Already approved by the state Senate, it now goes to Gov. Beverly Perdue (D) for her signature.

Despite the requests of environmental advocates, the federal government still does not regulate coal ash as hazardous waste, leaving oversight largely up to the states. However, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lisa Jackson has said she will propose a regulation by year's end.

As we reported earlier this week, Gov. Perdue already endorsed the legislation, which was championed by state Rep. Pricey Harrison, a Guilford County Democrat. The other original sponsors of the measure were state Reps. Grier Martin (D-Wake) and Susan Fisher (D-Buncombe).

The law moves responsibility for inspecting the dams from the N.C. Utilities Commission to the N.C. Department of Environment and Natural Resources. The Utilities Commission required dam inspections by independent engineers every five years.

N.C. DENR will be required to inspect high-hazard dams -- those where a failure would likely kill people -- every other year. Steve McEvoy, North Carolina's dam safety engineer, told the Charlotte Observer that the state is already inspecting high-hazard dams every year in practice, while dams classed as low-hazard are inspected every five years:

McEvoy said state engineers will have to review the dams coming under their supervision to determine their hazard classifications under DENR standards. Ratings by different agencies can be inconsistent. The DENR database, for example, labels as low-hazard Duke's ash-basin dams at its Marshall plant in Catawba County and Buck plant in Rowan County. But the Environmental Protection Agency last month listed those dams, and dams at four other Duke plants, as high hazard.

The EPA's recent release of the list of high-hazard ash impoundments has highlighted problems with how those facilities' hazard ratings are determined. As we reported, the Tennessee Valley Authority's Kingston facility did not appear on the agency's high-hazard list -- despite the clear potential for deaths had the billion-gallon spill that occurred late at night last winter happened instead on a summer day.

The EPA's list of the nation's high-hazard coal ash dumps included 44 in all -- none of them in Tennessee.

It turns out this was because the EPA allowed TVA to rate its own facilities -- and it ranked all of its coal ash impoundments as "low hazard." The Knoxville, Tenn.-based Southern Alliance for Clean Energy called the self-rating system "outrageous." Since then, TVA has raised the hazard ratings on a number of its coal ash facilities, the New York Times reports:

... [T]he utility sent a letter to the Environmental Protection Agency saying that "in the interest of taking a conservative, self-critical approach," it had reclassified four of its sites, Bull Run and Cumberland in Tennessee and Colbert and Widows Creek in Alabama, as "high hazard." Most of the others were reclassified as "significant" hazards, which means that dam failure would most likely result in economic loss and environmental damage.

Meanwhile, a report released this week by consultants hired by TVA found widespread problems with how the federal utility is operating and maintaining its coal ash disposal sites. The consultants found that "the necessary systems, controls and culture were not in place" to properly manage ash at the company's 11 coal-fired power plants, the Associated Press reports:

The report found TVA had no standard operating or maintenance procedures and failed to conduct annual training for engineers doing inspections. It said there was little or no internal communication between the four TVA divisions responsible for ash retention.

The consultants also said that two earlier leaks at the Kingston facility were patched without "investigating the cause of the incidents beyond the specific physical occurrences." The consultants are with the law firm McKenna Long & Aldridge of Atlanta.

(This story originally appeared at Facing South.)

Related Links:

What Do Coal and Dirty Dorm Rooms Have in Common?

Capturing the massive social benefits of fuel efficiency requires regulation

Copenhagen, U.S.A. December 7

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency approved a plan last week to dump 3 million tons of coal ash that spilled from a Tennessee Valley Authority power plant in eastern Tennessee in an impoverished, largely African-American community in Alabama -- and the decision is sparking resistance among local officials and residents who don't want the toxic waste.

The district attorney for Perry County, Ala. -- where the privately owned Arrowhead landfill that's getting the ash is located -- said yesterday the federal government's decision to bring the waste to his community was "tragic and shortsighted" and would endanger generations of residents, the Associated Press reports:

Perry County District Attorney Michael Jackson said he would monitor the lengthy disposal process to make sure the landfill operator and the federal utility comply with environmental regulations.

Jackson said he doesn't know if anything can be done to block the shipments, however.

"We're looking at every option, talking to different groups," Jackson said.

The Alabama Department of Environmental Management defends the decision, and some Perry County officials say it will bring millions of dollars in payments and about 50 jobs to the area.

Coal ash contains significant levels of toxic pollutants including arsenic, lead and mercury as well as radioactive elements, but it is still not regulated by the federal government as hazardous waste. EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson has said her agency plans to release a proposed federal rule for the waste by year's end.

In May, Facing South broke the story that TVA's decision to primarily consider two landfills for dumping the ash -- in Perry County, Ala. and Taylor County, Ga. -- raised environmental justice concerns because of the social vulnerability of the communities targeted.  

Georgia's Taylor County is an agricultural area where almost 41% of the population is African-American and more than 24% of residents live in poverty, according to census data. Alabama's Perry County -- part of the historic "Black Belt" -- is 69% African-American with more than 32% of its residents living in poverty, making it one of the state's poorest counties.

TVA reportedly considered moving the coal ash to two communities in eastern Tennessee that are predominantly white and with lower poverty levels, but the company sought regulators' approval only for the Georgia and Alabama sites. TVA's announcement regarding the Alabama landfill's selection said the choice was made after an evaluation process involving more than 30 companies.

In a letter to Facing South following publication of our May report, Peyton T. Hairston Jr., TVA's senior vice president for corporate responsibility and diversity, took issue with the story:

To write that TVA has made decisions on where to transport ash from the Kingston coal spill based on the racial composition of a community is simply wrong.

For the record, the story did not say TVA made its disposal decision because of the community's racial composition. But the effect is the same: TVA -- with EPA's approval -- has chosen to move toxic waste from a predominantly white and relatively well-off community in Tennessee to a poor and majority-black community in Alabama.

Meanwhile, Perry County District Attorney Jackson is not the only Alabamian raising concerns about the dumping decision. The Tuscaloosa News editorialized against the move in a piece titled "Coal ash dump site in Alabama not welcome":

Why is it that the cheapest, politically easiest option for dumping this toxic waste is to put it in a poor, rural county in Alabama's Black Belt?

Local residents are also voicing opposition -- some in creative ways. When TVA held a public meeting last month in Harriman, Tenn. to discuss the ash disposal plans, Perry County resident Betsy Ramaccia showed up wearing a protective suit and breathing mask to denounce the decision as "an environmental injustice and a social injustice," WVLT-TV reports. To view the segment, which was produced before EPA approved the disposal decision, see Jonathan Hiskes' recent report here at Grist.

And residents of Uniontown, the community closest to the Alabama landfill, got an opportunity to speak their piece about the dumping plans via www.ashholes.org, a website created by Project M, a socially responsible design firm that's also behind the innovative PieLab community space in nearby Greensboro, Ala. It features a short video of Uniontown residents, including the man in the still shot above, delivering a simple message to the EPA administrator.

"Lisa Jackson, will you protect us?"

(This story originally appeared at Facing South)

Related Links:

Chuck Norris on Copenhagen

Capturing the massive social benefits of fuel efficiency requires regulation

Toward a medically defensible energy policy

Kingston, Tenn., coal ash spillThe Environmental Protection Agency is still figuring out what to do with the millions of tons of coal ash that spilled through a broken levy levee in eastern Tennessee last December. But it looks like much of it may be shipped to Perry County in central Alabama, where residents are none too excited about the prospect of their county becoming “The New Ash Hole of Alabama.”

Alabama activist Betsy Ramaccia, dressed in a haz-mat suit, handed out fake newspapers with that slogan at a Tennessee Valley Authority meeting in Tennessee last month. And the Web site www.ashholes.org has a simple, direct, and powerful video of Perry County residents asking EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson to protect them from the toxic elements in fly ash, a byproduct of coal-fired electricity plants.

The short clip is worth a view. Knoxville’s WVLT TV also has a solid report on Ramaccia’s work and the environmental questions surrounding moving the spilled ash.

"It's an environmental injustice and it's social injustice," Ramaccia told WVLT about shipping the waste to Alabama. "We're concerned about a new group of citizens about to be affected by this ash spill."

Perry County is 69% African-American, and more than 32% of its population lives in poverty, Sue Sturgis reports. She wrote that earlier plans to ship the ash to Pennsylvania were nixed because of worries it would contaminate groundwater.

(Hat tip to Ramaccia for pointing us toward the videos.)

Related Links:

Chuck Norris on Copenhagen

What Do Coal and Dirty Dorm Rooms Have in Common?

Learning how to count to 350

The city of Kingston, Tenn. plans to hold its annual July 4 "Smokin' the Water" celebration tomorrow at a public park near Watts Bar Reservoir. The event is expected to draw as many as 25,000 people with festivities including raft races, boating and swimming.

But the park is only a short distance downstream from the site of the massive coal ash spill from the Tennessee Valley Authority's Kingston power plant -- and test results released this week show dangerous levels of heavy metal contamination that could endanger the health of people who come in contact with the water. (Click here for a Google Earth image showing the proximity of the plant, address above and to the left, and the park, below and to the right.)

Among the toxic contaminants found at levels exceeding basic water safety standards were antimony, arsenic, barium, beryllium, cadmium, chromium, lead, mercury, nickel, selenium and thallium -- metals that have been linked to cancer and other health problems. For details on the chemicals' health effects, visit the U.S. Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry's ToxFAQs page.

The tests were conducted by consultants hired by an environmental law firm that's suing TVA over last December's disaster, which released a billion gallons of toxic coal ash into a nearby community and waterways. The attorneys released the results to regulatory authorities this week. A June 30 letter sent by the firm to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation stated:

Although these samples have been taken for litigation purposes, we believe that the agencies with the responsibility to protect public health and the environment should have the results in order to make informed decisions about protecting downstream water users, particularly given the upcoming July 4th weekend, which will surely include significant public contact with the waterways as part of the holiday festivities and recreation.

The samples were taken recently by qualified consultants using methods approved by EPA and TDEC and analyzed by a certified in-state laboratory. To view the law firm's water testing data, click here. For the United Mountain Defense press release about the findings, which includes an excerpt of the law firm's letter to environmental regulators, click here.

Last month, EPA, TDEC and TVA jointly issued a recreational advisory for upper sections of the Watts Bar Reservoir. But the law firm warns that its data show unsafe concentrations of metals much further downstream than stated in the advisory. In fact, it found high levels of arsenic, lead and mercury 27 miles into the reservoir.

To date, TVA has spent more than $100 million on the cleanup of the Dec. 22, 2008 ash spill. The final cost of the project -- excluding fines and litigation -- is estimated at as much as $975 million.

(This story originally appeared at Facing South.)

Related Links:

What Do Coal and Dirty Dorm Rooms Have in Common?

Copenhagen, U.S.A. December 7

Toward a medically defensible energy policy

A new report from an engineering firm hired by the Tennessee Valley Authority identified factors behind last year's disaster that unleashed more than a billion of gallons of toxic ash from a massive storage pond at the federal company's Kingston plant in eastern Tennessee.

It claims that the disaster was a one-of-a-kind event -- but skeptical coal ash watchdogs are calling for a more thorough investigation by federal authorities.

"This type of explanation sounds eerily familiar," says Earthjustice attorney Lisa Evans. "When 125 people were killed in the Buffalo Creek coal slurry disaster of 1972, the coal company made the same claims, calling the event an 'act of God' to avoid liability, despite the fact that the dam failure was clearly caused by poorly constructed and inspected impoundments."

Commissioned by TVA and conducted by the Los Angeles-based engineering giant AECOM, the report says that the Kingston spill was caused by a combination of factors. They include the high water content of the wet ash, the increasing height of the ash pile, the construction of sloping dikes over the wet ash, and the existence of an unusual bottom layer of slimy ash and silt.

According to TVA Chief Operating Office Bill McCollum, the combination of conditions that contributed to the disaster was "unusual."

"No other ash pond in the TVA system was built like Kingston," he says.

But it's unclear whether there are other ash ponds in the United States afflicted with similar problems. Earlier this month, it came to light that the federal Environmental Protection Agency has identified 44 coal ash waste disposal sites so hazardous that if they were to fail like the one at Kingston large numbers of people could die. But while the agency has reportedly notified first responders about those hazardous sites, it is refusing to share their location with the public due to security concerns.

Evans points out that the AECOM report did not examine what role TVA's negligence may have played in the spill. Nor does it consider whether the dumping of millions of tons of toxic coal ash in similar facilities across the country is a "recipe for disaster."

"TVA's self-serving version of the truth won't suffice," Evans says. "We need an immediate investigation by the relevant federal agencies with expertise in dam safety and hazardous substances, namely FEMA's National Dam Safety Program and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

This week marked the six-month anniversary of TVA's disaster in eastern Tennessee's Roane County. The incident, which occurred in the early morning hours of Dec. 22, 2008, unleashed a six-foot wall of toxic muck that completely destroyed one nearby house, left three others uninhabitable and contaminated nearby water supplies.

To date, only an estimated 3% of the spilled ash has been cleaned up. The waste was initially sent to landfills in predominantly poor and black communities in Perry County, Ala. and Taylor County, Ga. as part of a pilot test project. TVA has since announced that it plans to dispose of most of the ash at the Perry County site, the Chattanooga Times Free Press reports.

Earlier this week, a public meeting about the ash cleanup plans in Harriman, Tenn. drew protesters from Perry County, Ala. who objected to the disposal plan.

"We don't believe that it's right for something that toxic to be dumped on people who don't even know it's happening," protester Betsy Ramaccia told WATE news.

(This story originally appeared at Facing South.)

Related Links:

Chuck Norris on Copenhagen

Toward a medically defensible energy policy

Big Coal and child victims

The Tennessee Valley Authority's Inspector General released a critical audit this week on the federal company's response to last December's massive ash spill disaster at its Kingston power plant in eastern Tennessee's Roane County.

The incident involved a failure in a coal ash containment pond that released more than a billion gallons of toxic waste into a nearby community and river.

The interim report finds that TVA:

* failed to implement the National Incident Management System in accordance with a Homeland Security Presidential Directive, which hampered communications and delayed emergency response following the spill;

* released inaccurate and inconsistent information to the media; and

* failed to communicate claims policies and decisions to victims of the spill in a timely manner.

TVA generally agrees with the report's findings, but it takes issue with the charge of widespread inaccuracies in its media statements.

The IG's report points to a number of these inaccuracies, including a dramatic initial underestimate of the amount of ash spilled, an incorrect statement that no dead fish were found downstream of the spill, and TVA's reworking of its coal ash description to say it consists primarily of "inert material not harmful to the environment."

TVA responds to those charges in the audit report. "We respectfully disagree with the description of information being inaccurate or inconsistent 'in many cases,' given the level of media inquiries, number of statements, interviews, briefings, etc, that was being handled; although 'in several cases' the initial information was incorrect," it says.

But as it turns out, the IG didn't even capture the full extent of the company's efforts to downplay the disaster's dangers.

Earlier this year, we reported on how TVA misled the public about the radiation threat from the spilled ash. The company claimed that the ash was no more dangerous in terms of radioactivity than low-sodium table salt, but subsequent testing by independent scientists found significantly greater radiation risks than the company acknowledged.

The audit report does not include any discussion of this.

The IG recommends that TVA consider establishing a "clearly defined protocol" requiring verification from more than one source before releasing a statement to the media. It also calls on the company to work with local residents to improve communications related to the damage claims process.

Meanwhile, TVA has won a protective order to keep secret "sensitive information" related to the spill in the seven multimillion-dollar lawsuits that have been filed since the disaster, the Knoxville (Tenn.) Metro Pulse reports. The order applies to trade secrets and proprietary information.

(This story originally appeared at Facing South.)

Related Links:

What Do Coal and Dirty Dorm Rooms Have in Common?

Copenhagen, U.S.A. December 7

Toward a medically defensible energy policy

Stop what you're doing and proceed immediately to the current issue of GQ magazine, which contains a blockbuster piece of investigative journalism: "Black Tide," by Sean Flynn. Here's the slug:

Just days before Christmas last year, an environmental disaster one hundred times the size of the Exxon Valdez (yes, you read that right) unfolded on a riverbank in Eastern Tennessee. A wave of poisonous sludge buried a town ... along with the myth of Clean Coal.

Flynn traces the history of the people and land affected by the Kinston, Tenn. coal ash spill, and uses that as a jumping off point for a searing look at the damage coal is doing to Appalachia. It's criminal that there have been so few follow-up stories on this disaster, especially given that the problem of the spilled ash remains unsolved and possibly insoluble. (Thus far TVA has ... sprinkled hay on it.) Some 1,500 similar coal ash storage sites remained scattered across the Southeast, largely unregulated.

Flynn's piece is comprehensive, precise, and devastating.

And difficult to sum up in a blog post. I particularly enjoyed this passage, though, which comes late in the story:

The Term clean coal entered the lexicon in its current faux-eco-activist incarnation—with the implication that coal can be a source of nonpolluting fuel, that it can be scrubbed of its toxins and its carbon dioxide rendered harmless—with stunning speed, largely in the past two years through the expensive efforts of two groups: the American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity, a lobbying group for coal-burning industries, and the Hawthorn Group, a marketing firm hired by ACCCE.

They are quite proud of their success, too. In December, about the time of the Kingston disaster, Hawthorn posted a newsletter on its Web site extolling the “highlights of a recent grassroots campaign Hawthorn created and managed” for ACCCE. Leaving aside the fact that grassroots campaigns typically are not created and managed by hired flacks, Hawthorn did have much glad news to report. Throughout the presidential campaign, it had focused on “finding creative ways to increase the visibility of the issue and…demonstrating strong voter support,” which is marketing-speak for littering crowds with fresh-faced human props in shirts and hats screened with clean coal. Do that with enough “branded teams,” as Hawthorn calls them, at enough rallies; buy enough TV spots; plead your case to enough reporters, and eventually the idea spreads that coal is downright pristine—that it can even, as Hawthorn puts it, “be part of the solution to climate change.” It was genius, and extremely effective. By the fall of 2008,

President-elect Obama and Senator McCain, their running mates and their surrogates adopted our language and included it as part of their stump speeches. ACCCE shaped the debate by finding supporters of the candidates and turning them into clean coal advocates.

Obama still talks about it, and he gets cheers every time. Because the public now believes in clean coal. Hawthorn polled what the firm considered “public opinion leaders” in September 2007 and again at the end of 2008 on, among other things, whether they favored burning coal to generate electricity. The first go-round was a split: 46 percent in favor, 50 percent opposed. But after a year of Hawthorn bleating “clean coal” over and over, support rose to 72 percent—and opposition nose-dived to 22 percent.

Results such as these would be impressive no matter what the issue. Yet they are especially so in this instance, because the idea Hawthorn is selling—Coal is clean!—is complete horseshit.

Indeed.

Please go read the story. Buy the issue on newsstands. Pass it along to your friends.

Related Links:

Chuck Norris on Copenhagen

What Do Coal and Dirty Dorm Rooms Have in Common?

Copenhagen, U.S.A. December 7

Some of the more than 1 billion gallons of toxic coal ash that spilled from an impoundment at the Tennessee Valley Authority's Kingston power plant in eastern Tennessee last December is making its way to landfills in poor and black communities in Alabama and Georgia, as we reported last week at Facing South.

It turns out that TVA also looked into sending the waste to Pennsylvania for dumping into abandoned mines -- but that state's Department of Environmental Protection rejected the ash as substandard.

"This ash material was accidentally released from a disposal impoundment and mixed with unknown materials in the river water and bottom sediment," Pennsylvania DEP Secretary John Hanger announced last week. "DEP only certifies coal ash for mine reclamation in Pennsylvania that is not contaminated with other materials and can meet our stringent chemical requirements."

But experts say that Pennsylvania's toxicity standards for coal ash used in such projects are not particularly high -- at least not high enough to keep the ash from damaging water quality in the vicinity of the dump sites.

"PADEP is hurling boulders through their glass house with their public rejection of TVA ash as too contaminated for mine disposal," Earthjustice attorney Lisa Evans told Facing South.

Evans is one of the authors of a 2007 report that found widespread contamination of groundwater and surface water across Pennsylvania due to dumping of coal ash waste into abandoned mines as part of its land reclamation program. The report by the Clean Air Task Force found degraded water quality at two-thirds of the sites examined, with levels of arsenic, cadmium, chromium, copper, lead, nickel, zinc and other pollutants found to exceed drinking-water and other water-quality standards.

A Pennsylvania newspaper reports that the material was apparently being considered as fill for an amphitheater construction project underway on abandoned mine lands in Hazleton, a predominantly white community in the northeastern part of the state that gained fame in recent years for its controversial efforts to drive out illegal immigrants.

The Hazleton Standard-Speaker quoted a TVA spokesperson as saying the federal company decided on its own against sending the ash to Pennsylvania because the site where it was to be used lacked a liner to prevent the material from contaminating groundwater. Abandoned mines where coal ash waste is being dumped across Pennsylvania typically lack liners -- one of the reasons why CATF's report found such widespread water contamination.

Instead, TVA is sending the spilled coal ash waste from Tennessee to landfills in in Taylor County, Ga. and Perry County, Ala. The choice of these communities for disposal of the waste raises environmental justice concerns, since almost 41% of Taylor County's population is African-American and more than 24% of its residents live in poverty, while Alabama's Perry County is 69% African-American with more than 32% of its population in poverty, according to the latest census data. Residents had no voice in the decision-making process, given that there was no opportunity for public comment.

The landfill officials have pointed out that their facilities have synthetic liners and systems to collect and treat the liquid runoff known as leachate in order to help prevent groundwater contamination. But even lined landfills with leachate collection systems provide no guarantee that the materials dumped into them won't eventually impact groundwater.

In fact, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency -- which is now overseeing cleanup of the TVA spill -- has acknowledged that all landfills eventually leak. The Environmental Research Foundation points to a Federal Register notice from EPA that states:

There is good theoretical and empircal evidence that the hazardous constituents that areplaced in land disposal facilities very likely will migrate from the facility into the broader environment. This may occur several years, even many decades, after placement of waste in the facility, but data and scientific prediction indicate that, in most cases, even with the applicaiton of best available land disposal technology, it will occur eventually.

Unlike many constituents of ordinary household garbage, the toxic elements in coal ash waste -- arsenic, lead and the like -- do not break down over time. That means that once the landfill liner deteriorates and springs a leak, those chemicals will be present to leach into the groundwater.

In addition, the leachate collection systems used in landfills are far from foolproof, ERF notes. For one thing, the systems have a tendency to clog up and/or corrode after a few decades. And as the fluid builds up and puts pressure on the bottom of the structure, it increases the likelihood of liner failure.

There's no doubt that TVA needs to clean up the spilled ash. The results of independent tests conducted on samples collected downstream from the spill that were released today found dangerous levels of toxic elements present in the water, sediment and fish, with some water samples showing arsenic levels 260 times and lead 16 times drinking water standards. The scientists also found fish with lesions and lost scales, which could be attributed to contaminated water.

But TVA's choice for disposing of the ash is not without its problems, either. Despite assurances by the company and government regulators that their plan is safe, the ash waste presents a very real risk to the communities where it's being sent for long-term storage.

At the very least, the authorities should acknowledge that fact.

Related Links:

Chuck Norris on Copenhagen

What Do Coal and Dirty Dorm Rooms Have in Common?

Ask Umbra’s video advice on composting

In early April, the excellent investigative journalism show NOW on PBS ran an episode called "Can Coal be Earth-Friendly?"

In conjunction with the episode, NOW hosted an online debate between me and Joe Lucas, spokesflack for the American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity (ACCCE). We were given a series of five questions. We each answered the questions, and were each given an opportunity to rebut the other's answers.

When I received Lucas's answers, I responded to them. When he received mine, he ... ran off like a pansy. I don't think he likes arguing with people who know what they're talking about and have more than a 30 second soundbite with which to respond.

The debate is reprinted below, with NOW's kind permission.

-----

Joe Lucas: Of course there is. Our opponents like to claim that we invented the term, when in fact clean coal (which is short for clean coal technology) has been an accepted term-of-art for several decades now.

The facts are simple. To date, we have used advanced emissions control technologies (i.e. clean coal technologies) to reduce emissions currently regulated under federal clean air act laws. Sulfur dioxide (SO2), nitrogen oxides (NOx) and other emissions have been dramatically reduced over the past several decades. This type of reduction didn't just happen—especially given that our use of coal for generating electricity nearly tripled during this same period. It happened because of the use of technologies.

And like other technologies, clean coal technologies are truly evolutionary. Going forward, this same type of technological innovation will lead to reductions in carbon dioxide emissions.

David Roberts: No. When coal is mined, it destroys the land and surrounding communities. When coal is washed, it produces millions of tons a year of toxic, water-polluting slurry. When coal is burned, it produces millions of tons a year of toxic ash and periodic disasters like the December spill in Tennessee. Coal combustion produces mercury and particulate pollution that leads to some 24,000 premature deaths a year and billions in healthcare costs, with pregnant mothers and young children particularly at risk.

All these problems would go unaddressed by so-called "clean coal," which would reduce just one pollutant, carbon dioxide. And even that promise is a phantom: Not a single commercial coal power plant in America captures or otherwise prevents CO2 emissions.

"Clean coal" is a PR gimmick.

David Roberts' Rebuttal: Mr. Lucas is right about one thing: reductions in conventional air pollutants from coal plants "didn't just happen." They were forced on the industry by federal law. The industry fought those laws tooth and nail for years and has been fined and sued hundreds of times for breaking them. Hardly something to boast about.

Incidentally, those air pollutants scrubbed out of smoke stacks? They end up in toxic coal ash waste—the kind that flooded Kingston, Tennessee last December. Now the industry's fighting efforts to regulate waste ash. And fighting off efforts to clean up its Appalachia-destroying mining operations.

For a "clean" industry, Big Coal sure does seem averse to getting cleaner.

Joe Lucas: Coal is a fuel that is uniquely positioned to meet the needs for base load (constant, steady, on-demand) power. It is domestically abundant—we have more energy in the form of coal than the Middle East has oil. It is an affordable fuel and is getting cleaner everyday.

We support the use of all domestic fuels to meet America's growing energy needs. However, energy sources are more likely to be compliments to one another than competitors. Take wind and solar for example. They do not displace coal or other base load fuels because wind and solar are intermittent power sources - only producing electricity under certain optimum environmental conditions. To add these intermittent energy resources to the transmission grid, they have to be backed-up with a non-intermittent resource—like coal. What's more, it would take a one-mile band of windmills spanning across the entire equator (around 25,000 miles) just to generate enough power to meet 20% of America's electricity needs.

David Roberts: Yes. Putting aside the health and environmental effects above, coal is increasingly uneconomic. For one thing, a whole array of new studies suggests that U.S. coal reserves could begin declining within 20 years (not quite the "300 year supply" the industry touts).

As this fact and the inevitability of greenhouse-pollution restrictions become more widely understood, new coal plants are being exposed as risky and unsound investments, which is why nearly 100 proposed plants have been canceled in the past two years. States dependent on coal are already seeing their electrical rates skyrocket, and coal utilities are requesting further rate hikes.

Despite coal industry claims, U.S. coal power is neither "abundant" nor "cheap." It's a sinking ship.

David Roberts' Rebuttal: Here's a detailed plan to meet America's energy needs without new coal plants, using a combination of efficiency and clean renewable power. Here's another, another, another, another, and more. Just last week the Department of Interior released a study showing that offshore wind alone could satisfy U.S. electricity needs.

The pressure to build new coal plants is political—a result of the $40 million PR campaign Mr. Lucas is running—not technological.

The message that there's "no alternative" to coal's enormous health and environmental costs is fear mongering. It's a vote against American ingenuity and resourcefulness.

Joe Lucas: We support a mandatory federal carbon management program. In order for such a program to achieve its goals, it must 1) achieve emissions reductions, 2) promote greater energy independence by maintaining fuel diversity, and 3) ensure that businesses and families are not paying higher than necessary energy costs.

In that regard, technology is the key. Recently, more and more policy makers have adopted the notion that a federal climate policy necessitates developing and deploying carbon capture and storage technologies as the foundation for such a policy. President Obama has talked about this as a part of his strategy. Other distinguished academic, governmental, and non-governmental organizations have indicated that CCS (carbon capture and storage) technology is essential to meeting the goal of reducing greenhouse gas emissions on a global scale.

David Roberts: Asked whether human greenhouse gas emissions are driving climate change, coal pitchman Joe Lucas famously said, "I don't know. I'm not a scientist." Happily, non-scientists can use Google to find out what scientists think, and they overwhelmingly agree: climate change is urgent and potentially catastrophic. In the face of this kind of problem, "containing" coal's emissions—which equal those of the entire transportation sector—is unambitious at best. Those emissions need to be phased out, as quickly as possible.

It's simple: the industry should be forbidden from building new coal plants unless they meet stringent CO2 emissions standards. And over time, all existing coal plants should be required to meet those standards as well, or shut down. If coal can compete in a carbon-constrained world, good. If not, it should move out of the way for solutions that can.

David Roberts' Rebuttal: Big Coal sure has a funny way of "supporting" a plan to reduce climate pollution. It has sponsored, with its allies in Big Oil, a decades-long effort to confuse and deceive the public about global warming. It is still funding groups and politicians that work to block mandatory pollution reductions. Mr. Lucas even linked to such a politician in his response!

With public pressure building, the industry has shifted from battling to co-opting energy/climate legislation, attempting to transform it into a corporate welfare slush fund. An easy tip for spotting subsidy seekers: they repeat the word "technology" a lot! (As Mr. Lucas does several times.)

David Roberts: Put it this way: there is no other way forward for the U.S. coal industry. Coal is effectively made of carbon, so there's no way to use it without producing millions of tons of CO2. The best case scenario for the industry, then, is to be able to capture the stuff and bury it back underground.

But despite the misleading PR from industry, experts agree that CCS is at least 10-15 years out and will be extremely expensive when it finally arrives. Sequestration is arguably important for the developing world, and worth researching for that reason, but it's unlikely to save the U.S. coal industry.

David Roberts' Rebuttal: CCS may well be needed for meeting global carbon reduction targets, though there is considerable debate on that point. (It's a genuine dilemma what to do about the spread of dirty coal in China and India.) But it is crystal clear that America can meet its carbon-reduction goals without CCS.

More to the point: Mr. Lucas's group is fronting an effort to smuggle dirty coal plants into the U.S. under the 10-15-years-off promise of CCS. The industry calls such plants "CCS-ready," much like my driveway is Ferrari-ready.

Watch for the shell game.

Joe Lucas: Recently, the President said that if the cost of a federal carbon management program were too high, people wouldn't do it. Similarly, former British Prime Minister Tony Blair said that if you make a country choose between growing their economy or reducing emissions—they'll choose their economy every time. So we need to find a solution that allows us to have both—and President Obama and other policy makers realize that.

By deploying CCS technology we can preserve access to affordable energy. This protects and hopefully creates jobs in the manufacturing sector and helps families balance household budgets. Additionally, a study done with several of the nation's leading industrial unions showed that deploying CCS technologies will create over one million job years—and as one of the union representatives said in describing these jobs, these are jobs that pay enough so that you can afford to raise a family.

So investing in clean coal technologies for carbon capture and storage is clearly a part of the President's energy goals. Doing so meets his three primary objectives of 1) creating jobs, 2) promoting greater energy independence, and 3) increasing environmental protection.

David Roberts: Obama supports "clean coal" for a simple reason: coal-state legislators wield a great deal of power in Congress. No national politician can afford to directly confront the network of industry lobby groups and legislators that defends coal's interests.

Obama will direct considerable federal money toward research and deployment for CCS; it's part of the price he has to pay to bring coal-state legislators on board for serious climate change legislation.

The key issue is whether Obama will allow the coal industry to build new dirty coal plants—plants without CCS. He said on the campaign trail that he will not. We'll see if he keeps that promise.

David Roberts' Rebuttal: Mr. Lucas's first paragraph is absolutely correct, but the second is a head-smacking non sequitur. If we want the transition to a clean, green economy to produce jobs and prosperity, why would we focus on the most costly path forward?

International consulting firm McKinsey & Co. has produced the definitive cost curve comparing various emission reduction strategies. CCS is at the far right—among the two or three most expensive out of dozens of alternatives. The smart strategy is to focus on those at the left, the ones that save rather than cost money. (They also generate more jobs.) That's Economics 101!

Related Links:

What Do Coal and Dirty Dorm Rooms Have in Common?

Ask Umbra’s video advice on composting

Fair, Ambitious & Binding: Essentials for a Successful Climate Deal

Related Links:

What Do Coal and Dirty Dorm Rooms Have in Common?

Copenhagen, U.S.A. December 7

Toward a medically defensible energy policy

Related Links:

What Do Coal and Dirty Dorm Rooms Have in Common?

Copenhagen, U.S.A. December 7

Toward a medically defensible energy policy

Related Links:

What Do Coal and Dirty Dorm Rooms Have in Common?

Copenhagen, U.S.A. December 7

Toward a medically defensible energy policy